Emotion by Committee

Somewhere deep inside, we gather in a cuddle huddle, hanging on to each other, weathering another emotional storm. We’re all there, the littles and the bigs, the wise patient sad voices and the young idealistic ones, the solid citizens and the rogues.

One small voice rises to say what we are all thinking, “Will it always hurt like this?”

The group pulls in tighter, feeling the raw ache in multiple

One of the older ones asks, in a tired, loving voice, “Will we always love the way we do?”

A pause while we all think in the ways each of us do. When we love we throw ourselves into it with all we have, we’re all in, no reserves. Could we do it differently and still be who we are?

One rogue voice begins to wax poetic about the draw of the open road, leaving the hurt behind and letting the asphalt unfold ahead of us. We could be anyone we wanted to be, no one would know who we were, it would be the ultimate freedom. For a moment, everyone embraces that fantasy but only for a moment. This is also a familiar part of who we are, feeling the pull of adventure and new horizons while enjoying and thriving in the secure emotional bonds that make a home for us here in this life.

We all sit for a while breathing, feeling, remembering, acknowledging. In the end, we all agree that we don’t want to live or love halfway. We aren’t going to run away, as attractive as that option is sometimes. With a deep, collective breath, we accept our fate, our future of high highs and low lows. This is who we are.

The bigs pull the littles in closer and we make the conscious, collective choice to remain open to all of it: love, joy, heartache, history, change, hope, the future.

This is who we are.

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One Response to Emotion by Committee

Amber says:

October 23, 2012 at 5:27 pm

I like this idea of “littles” and “bigs,” and of them all being conscious of each other, of taking care of each other. I realize I do this to some degree, but not as consciously as you have here. I don’t allow myself to exist in multiples; I pit my identities against each other and definitey make value judgements. There is who I want to be versus who I am in any given moment. I don’t recognize that my “littles” and “bigs” always exist, all the time. Maybe I need to stop putting them in the ring to fight each other.

It started with the recognition that Kyle and Casey have a lot of differences in personality, voice, affinities, histories and, of course, gender. It feels different to think/feel from one in comparison to the other, but it’s not a full take over the way I believe someone with MPD would experience it (though I don’t know that for sure). Anyhow, it has come to my attention over the course of the past few years that I not only have a gender divide internally, a sense of fraternal twins who never separated, but also that my younger selves are also still around. There are times when I distinctly feel an age/experience difference and it translates into voice changes, different body language, etc. Granted, that tends to happen around peak experiences – sex, SM, extreme stress, are some ways my littles can come out. They are multiple as I am multiple, the little kyle and the little casey. I suppose I could be freaked out about all of this, but instead it makes life feel even more intense, like there’s more depth to everything, like everything I’m doing can potentially be felt at least 4 different ways. I say at least 4 because there are subtypes, which I think we all have depending on what role we are filling in our lives at the moment — Mom/Dad, buddy, worker, kinky Uncle/Daddy — are some of mine.

If you’d like to try a different approach to your various selves, consider sitting them down for a conversation. Maybe not all of them at once, it’s easier to have a two way conversation at first. Really feel the differences and allow for them to co-exist. It’s interesting, to say the least — K